No, no, no, no, no.
Sooooo, what on earth could be so important as to require free national coverage during primetime television, this time? Why, a talk on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Iraq, of course.
What to expect with this speech? First, there might be a brief rewrite of the Obama/Biden history on the subject. In view of that possibility, you need to know this:
Let's not forget that Obama and Biden, both, voted for a retreat from Iraq years ago. Each opposed the surge and each supported a dividing up of that country. One more matter: each is now trying to reframe their opposition their previous stand.
Obama spoke of a "dumb war." Unlike Biden, however, Obama never approved of the war; Biden voted for the war before pretending to have opposed that war . . . before [now] approving of the war.
Last year, Biden suggested that the successful end of this war may be "the single most important accomplishment of the Obama Administration" (Larry King Live - Feb of this year).
In n '08 op-ed, Obama tried to cover his "no" vote on the surge. In a responding "comment" by someone named John, we have this written comment:
Obama admits that he opposed the surge, and the attendant change in strategy and tactics, that have brought us close to victory. But he somehow manages to twist his being wrong about the surge--the major foreign policy issue that has arisen during his time in Congress--into vindication:
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we�ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq�s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
Actually, however, Obama opposed the surge not because of those "factors" but because he thought it would fail. He said, on January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.
On January 14, 2007, on Face the Nation, he said:
We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality -- we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.
On March 19, 2007, on the Larry King show, he said:
[E]ven those who are supporting -- but here's the thing, Larry -- even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.
On May 25, 2007, in a speech to the Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Obama said:
And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we're on in Iraq is working, I do not.
On July 18, 2007, on the Today show, he said:
My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.
On November 11, 2007, two months after General David Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working, Obama doubled down, saying that the administration's new strategy was making the situation in Iraq worse:
Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn't withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there. READ MORE AT POWER LINE >>>>With all of the above, we have part of the context for the speech tonight. Obama and Biden opposed the war and would have lost that war if they had had anything to do with the final decision.
Secondly, we might hear disparaging words about Bush's decision to invade. In view of that possibility, we give you these considerations:
Obama will not admit to the reasons why George Bush went into Iraq, why Bush believed in the notion of "WMD's." There are at least four reasons that forced Bush to invade:
1. Bill Clinton told George Bush that Saddam Hussein had WMD's. In fact, Clinton came out and defended Bush on this point early on in the that war.
2. George Tenet, Clinton's CIA director, a man Bush left as head of the CIA, was insistent as to the existence of WMD's.
3. All of the world's intelligence agency agreed with the CIA and reported so to Bush.
4. And Saddam Hussein, the evil dictator of Iraq, thumbed his nose at the world as he proclaimed the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
Had Bush not reacted, he would have been declared incompetent to the point of [perhaps] impeachment. Bush HAD NO CHOICE. and that is the fact of the matter.
Add these comments to the historical and factual context of the Iraqi war.
He will not admit to the winning of the war ON THE GROUND. In fact, while we lost some 4,000 troops, we kill more than 80,000 terrorist over the years and wounded or captured well over 200,000. In construction terminology, the terrorists got a butt-kicking.
What will Obama do with this speech? He will make a big deal out of the fact that he is keeping his campaign promise -- one of the few promises he even cares about. He is desperate to establish that he is a promise keeper, that his administration is moving in the right direction. Since he cannot make this argument with health care or the stimulus or , , , whatever (see our opening comments above).
Outside of the war, there really isn't much that he can brag about. So it is Iraq. The speech will be typical to the Obama style and completely beside the point as relates to the domestic needs of this country.
Our summary statement is this: bla bla bla. -- jds.
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